Comics Collection of Angoleme Founder Thrown Out With the Trash

Claude Moliterni, who died earlier this year at age 76, was a writer, an editor, one of the founders of the internationally famous Angoleme comics festival, and a massively influential advocate for the comics medium in Europe for the last 50 years.

And as Rich Johnston tragically reports, a significant portion of his posthumous comics collection, correspondence, art, and other personal effects were was recently found tossed onto a wet Parisian street with the trash. A passerby noticed the heap, photographed the history of the comics legend strewn across the ground, and posted it to a message board.

One commenter theorizes that perhaps his effects were given to a second-hand book dealer, who culled the most valuable objects and discarded the rest, though it's difficult to say for sure exactly what happened -- except that we're tremendously sad that it did.

It's all the more surprising than an act of such casual disregard for the memory of a respected figure in the comics world would take place in France, where comics enjoy huge, mainstream popularity in comparison to their niche status in America. And if you read through the mixture of French and Spanish in the message board postings, the man who discovered them in the street admits that he's not even a fan of comics, but still recognized Moliterni's name and the significance of seeing his things thrown on to the street like rubbish.

Between this and the ongoing drama of Frank Frazetta's family, which recently graduated to involve backhoes, it's sad to see how poorly the legacies of such significant figures are being handled now that they have left us.